The Second Burning Crusade Classic Load Test and Through the Dark Portal

Round two of the load test saw me at least a bit more prepared for the event based on the first try.  I copied over my level 60 hunter again and this time remembered to use his talent points to spec him up on the flight down to the Blasted Lands.

Arriving at Nethergarde Keep I found a bunch of people hanging around the gates.  They too were no doubt working from their previous experience.  The server was, once again, set to PvP so hanging around the dark portal was an invitation to get yourself ganked.

Those waiting for the word

I followed their lead for a bit, but found myself getting antsy to do something, so I followed the stream of brave souls who were riding out to the dark portal.  I set myself up within sight of it.

The dark portal once more

That image illustrates one of my frustrations with WoW Classic.  It looks like nobody is there at the portal.  In reality there were a a lot of people running around fighting or avoiding fighting around the valley.  The draw distance, which has been really wonky throughout WoW Classic, even in scenarios where it is just our group in an instance, just stubbornly refuses to fill things in until it is damn good and ready.

And, yes, there were a bunch of characters to draw, which might explain it taking its sweet time, but I was down and dead before the client could be bothered to draw the warlock who was dotting me up.

I probably should have stayed back at the keep.

I ran back to my corpse and decided to make a run for the portal.  Information as to what was actually going on was sparse and I was again eager to do something.  I jumped into the portal and once again banged into the rocks behind it.  The portal was not yet open for business.

Dying once more in the scrum at the portal, I managed to revive and retreat to one of the groups of alliance players off to the side of the portal.  I guess I could wait for a bit.

Waiting off to the side

Server performance at that point was about on par with the previous test.  Down there in the valley it took a good ten count for some things to respond and people moving in anything outside of a path that the client draw could predict tended to look like they were blinking about the terrain.  This was not promising.

As I hung about I noticed that the alliance quest giver was up on the main path, so I worked my way around to him and grabbed the quest “Through the Dark Portal.”  But before I could test whether or not this would let me through, a server announcement finally showed up telling everybody to go through the port.

Quest accepted then the server message… many of us were with Crustina

With some clear direction at last, we all rushed the portal.

Everybody to the portal!

That, or course, was the signal for everybody within range of the portal to start dropping as much AOE damage as they could.  I was among the casualties.

Then, as I was running back they pulled the plug on everybody to test the re-log routine again.  I dropped, then logged back in, got through the queue, back into the game, back to my corpse, and then, finally, through the portal… though I did have to drink a health potion to get past the gauntlet of damage being thrown about.

And once through the portal… everything was fine.

Through the portal to the stair of destiny

The far side of the portal is a sanctuary area, so there was no more fighting.  Server performance seemed fine from that point forward.  I got to Honor Hold, picked up a couple of quests, ran off and did them.

Avoided the Fel Reaver for once…

I also joined in on taking one of the conquest points, helped secure that, then got ganked by a pack of Horde, which is how PvP generally goes for me.

Over all, once through the portal, things seemed fine.  The draw distance thing is still there, but it most seemed okay.  I am not sure how to interpret the performance difference in Azeroth versus Outland.  Perhaps they didn’t bother with shards on the Azeroth side… there did seem to be a LOT of characters there… but had the shard tech running on the Outland side of things.

So there we go.

Come next Tuesday the 18th the pre-patch will be in place with the events and what not.  We will have to pick the destinations for our characters.  There is a whole support article up about the cloning process and what your options are what can be undone and what cannot. (Don’t make the wrong choice or you’ll have to pay the $35 to unlock the clone of your character.)

Also, the auction house will be shutting down today and remain closed until after the pre-patch is available.  The character cloning will pick up items you have in your mailbox, but things at the auction house must add a level of complication that Blizz wants to avoid.

Time to Earn some ISK

Back in the late summer of 2017 I was feeling done with null sec life.  I wasn’t sure where I was going to head, but I started pulling up stakes and shipping everything to Jita to facilitate my exit.  I had cleaned up, turned off, and shipped out just about everything when a Reavers deployment came up and I figured that would be my final act in null sec.

And then the deployment and subsequent war lasted for about a year and I was invested again and decided to carry on.  During that time and since I haven’t focused on earning any ISK, save for a brief experiment with Myrmidon ratting, which was as much about seeing how long I would survive as anything.

Being a target for ISK

I have been living off the stack of ISK I had accumulated before along with what I got for selling off various assets in Jita and whatever SRP the coalition has had to offer.  But now that stack of ISK, never that fat to begin with, has stated to dwindle.  I really don’t spend that much ISK, with ships and refits for doctrine changes being my major expenses, but the prices there have been going up thanks to CCP, while SRP hasn’t kept up.

So I want to at least start a trickle of ISK coming back into my wallet.  The catch is that I don’t really want to do any of the standby methods.  I’ve ratted, mined, and played the market enough to bore myself to tears.  So the options I have in my mind.

Sell Stuff

I still have a pile of stuff… piles of stuff…  sitting around in various stations, so this would be less playing the market and more clearing out hangars.  A bunch of it is nicely in Jita already, left over from the great clearing out of 2017, and I can contract other valuable caches to a high sec alt to move and sell.

Good: Easy-ish money, prices are up

Bad: Even I only have so much stuff stashed away, so this would be a short term-boost and not a long term strategy

Planetary Interaction

I pulled up my PI stuff back when and since then there was a UI update to improve the usability of the feature, so I already started on this just to see how much it had changed.  It is, I will admit, better than it was, but it is still opaque enough that I don’t know how anybody figures it out without a guide or a mountain of patience.  As before I set myself up to make components for fuel blocks, as there are always buy orders for that.

Good: Low effort, constant drip of income

Bad: Not really that lucrative unless you make it a job

Abyssal Sites

I have a high sec alt trained up enough to do fierce sites, the middle of the five levels of difficulty, in a Gila.  I have no mind to do any of the higher level ones as you get flagged as a target, but I could see myself running these a bit more regularly.  The problem is that the payout is very much RNG based.  I got a Leshak BPC once, built it, and sold it for a serious payout.  But more often I get dinky stuff to the point that losing a drone makes the whole thing a wash.  And I’ve yet to do anything but ruin modules with mutaplasmids.

Good: Not really that difficult, short duration, can listen to podcasts and audio books, lots of great screen shots

Bad: Payout is all over the map, feels a lot like ratting after a run or two, lost a half a billion ISK Gila stuck on an rock once so I’m already ISK negative

Skill Injectors

This is the “make money fast” arrow in my quiver.  I have a character setup to poop out a large injector every week and they are still going for more than 700 million ISK.  That would refill my wallet much faster than my ship losses are draining it.  There are two issues with it for me though.

First, though I am sure they make a ton of money for CCP, I feel that skill injectors diminished the game.  If I bitch about something and then make ISK from it there is an obvious level of hypocrisy present and, while no life is free from contradictions, I try to at least examine the more obvious ones I find in myself.

Second, while you can do it as an all in-game ISK operation, you are rewarded for spending money.  If I pay cash for the subscription and the extractors, I get to keep the full 700 million ISK per injector.  If I buy extractors on the market that goes down to about 350 million ISK.  And if I PLEX the account I end up getting a few million ISK per injector, which can can make a farm of many accounts lucrative, but makes the single character routine a bit paltry.  And if I am going to spend cash to make ISK I could just save the effort and buy PLEX to resell.

Good: Low, low effort, easy money

Bad: If I PLEX the account payouts are pretty thin, if I pay cash why not cut out the middle and simply buy PLEX to sell

Other?

I need to go back and look at that that “everything in New Eden” chart again to see if I am missing something that aligns to my level of commitment.  I remember a time when just collecting datacores once a year would sustain me for a while.

I’m not dying for ISK.  I could easily wander along as I have done for a couple more years before things became dire.  But I feel like I need a plan for the longer term, even if it means just getting a trickle of ISK flowing in regularly.  All I want to be able to do is keep on getting in sub cap fleets for fights.  That’s what keeps me logging in these days.

World of Warcraft 15th Anniversary Collectors Edition Announced

In addition to the WoW Classic launch date being announced there was also a news item about a World of Warcraft 15th Anniversary Collector’s Edition.

WoW at Fifteen

While the box won’t be available until early October, you can pre-order it today for $100, because of course you can.  And when I say box, I mean box, as this appears to be focused on physical items.

Things you get

The list of items for the CE are:

• Ragnaros Statue
  Behold Ragnaros, he who is ancient when this world was young! Bow, mortals, before this 10+ inch immortalization of the Firelord himself.
• Onyxia Pin
  Add to your pin collection and adorn your home with the head of Onyxia, Broodmother of the Black Dragonflight.
• Map of Azeroth Mouse Pad
  Gaze upon the realms your character has explored these past 15 years while you prepare for the next adventure.
• Fine Art Prints
  Reach into Azeroth’s vivid past with eight frameable fine art prints.
• 30 Days of Game Time
  Extend your stay in Azeroth with 30 days of game time to aid you on your next adventure.
• Alabaster Mounts
  Take to the skies with these majestic alabaster mounts—living stone tributes to a pair of familiar flying creatures.
  • Alabaster Stormtalon for Alliance characters
  • Alabaster Thunderwing for Horde characters

While I am fond of collector’s editions for WoW (I regret not getting the original one) I am not really big on physical items, save for maybe the sound track.  At my age I am already carrying too much baggage when it comes to little nick nacks and dust collectors, so a ten inch tall Ragnaros doesn’t thrill me.

The mounts… maybe.  I’d prefer battle pets, but mounts are still good.

The Anniversary Mounts

But Blizz has me covered.  If I want just the mounts, they will be available on their own in the Blizzard shop in August.  If you buy them there then buy the CE you will get a $25 credit in the Blizzard store to cover the overlap.

And if you don’t want to spend any money on this, Blizz has plans for in-game anniversary gifts for the 15th anniversary for all subscribers.  We’ll get both a mount and a pet.  Blizz had put up a video of them.

So, in addition to WoW Classic, we have some things to look forward to later this year.

 

WoW Classic Coming August 27th

The announcement has finally hit, we now know the date for WoW Classic.

Classic is as Classic does

I thought that given the spotty reception that the Battle for Azeroth expansion was getting would get Blizzard to reel in the launch closer to June.  But Blizzard will move at its own pace, so late August it is.  One more of my predictions proven wrong.  Two, actually.  Par for the course.

There are, of course, lots of details as to what classic really means.  People have been following the announcements and compiling lists to keep track of what is in and out.  I watch the one in the forums and the one on Reddit when I want to see where things stand.

We know it will be based on WoW version 1.12, which has already made some people scream “That’s not classic classic!” or some such.  There is no way to please everybody on this.

There will also be the six phases of raiding unlocked over time, though we do not have and sort of unlock schedule or plan as yet.

Recently it was announced that your character count on WoW Classic will be separate from your main WoW character count.  If you have used up all 50 character slots in WoW you will still get 50 in WoW Classic, limited to 10 characters per server.

There is also a list of things that were not in classic that will be in WoW Classic.  From the forum post list:

• The client will not run on 32-bit systems.
• Accessibility options such as colorblind will be present, though modified to fit Classic.
• Widescreen monitors are now fully supported.
• Right-clicking on a player to report them has been enabled.
• The modern engine no longer permits certain behaviors that could be used to get out of bounds.
• Battle.net chat will be integrated into Classic.
• Loot Trading will be introduced to Classic, allowing players to trade Bind on Pickup items to other players who participated in the same kill for up to 2 hours after the loot dropped, and assuming the item was not equipped.

The lack of support for 32-bit surprises me.  Does normal WoW not support 32-bit still?  I don’t get that, but there it is.  The loot trading thing caused a fuss a while back, but it is one of those things that solved a headache for Blizz as people would petition on accidental looting, so this just keeps that being a problem yet again.

And there are, of course, the things Blizz has said will not be in WoW Classic.

• LFR/LFD
• Cross realms
• Races after Vanilla
• Any content beyond Vanilla (as of right now)
• Transmog
• Achievements
• Progressive itemization

I don’t think any of those are controversial.

I expect that WoW Classic will be a big success at launch and that among the things from classic we will be reliving, server queues will be one of them.

If you cannot wait for August the beta for WoW Classic is launching tomorrow.  You can opt in for it with your account where you opt in for all betas.

Now I am just waiting for the “When do we get The Burning Crusade classic servers?” question to start pouring in.  Oh wait, I think it already has.

New Fantasy Movie League Options

If you’re reading this you are probably aware that Fantasy Movie League has been a thing around here for nearly a year at this point.  Over that time it quickly became a weekly post and there is now a TAGN league you can join and all that.  It has been fun… for me at least… and has kept me more aware than I have ever really been about movie releases.

But there have been some problematic aspects to the way FML runs its seasons.  There are features that sit wrong with myself or others, things like the Friday morning lockout deadline which allows the canny to get the Thursday night preview numbers (which count towards Friday totals) and change their lineup at the last moment to account for any unexpected performance.

However, now just two weeks before the Summer blockbuster season starts up, FML has announced a big upgrade to their league features.  You will now be able to alter the parameters of the leagues you create.  The options include:

• Lock Deadline. You can keep the lock time at the default Noon ET/9am PT Friday setting, or move it up all the way to 6pm ET/9pm PT on Monday (just an hour after new movies and prices come out!).
• Season Length. You can keep the default 12- to 14-week long season that FML uses for the Season Showdown competitions, or you can select a shorter season length from 2 to 12 weeks.
• Scoring Settings. You now have control over the following options:
  • Perfect Cineplex Bonus
  • Best Performer Bonus
  • Empty Screen Penalty
  • Worst Performer Penalty. This bonus category is new to FML! The Worst Performer is the Best Performer in reverse: the movie that had the worst box-office-to-FML-Bux ratio. The value can be set to whatever number is desired, or the feature turned off.

This seems to allow a league to be setup to cover all the various objections that people, including myself, have about the default way FML seasons are run.  There is enough there to make for some interesting scenarios.  What if, for example, you gave people a reverse “worst performer” penalty, that is to say, a worst performer bonus?  I am not sure you can do that, but that might shake things up.

Anyway I am going to propose a change to the TAGN league for the summer season.  This is what I am thinking of:

• Earlier Lock Deadline

This is the obvious one.  Make people pick and lock their choices before Thursday night previews.  The question is how early is early enough but not too early.  Part of me would like to see a really early lock, before previews or theater counts are out, which would be Wednesday morning at the latest.

However, I wouldn’t want to lock too early as that makes it more likely that people will forget to pick.  As fun/funny as a Tuesday morning lock would be, I wouldn’t want to do it before my weekly post goes up to remind people that the game is on and that they need to pick.  So I think the earliest optimal time is Wednesday night.  (Or I could move the post to Tuesday, which might not be a bad idea anyway.  I generally have it done Monday night.

Anyway, if you’re interested, I’d like to hear what time you think it ought to lock.

Then the second thing I am considering:

• No Bonuses

This is something that triggers a bit of my inner Bernie I think.  Giving a bonus to the person who got the best score strikes me a bit as the rich getting richer.  You already beat everybody and now you want more?  As a DM once said to me, “Gold is its own reward!” when explaining why he wasn’t dishing out xp with gold the way it said he was supposed to back in the era of AD&D 1.0.  Winning is its own reward.  You don’t need a bonus to extend your lead.

Or such are my thoughts.  I’d be good with other people’s input on this.  I’ll put up a poll about this in case you just want to click a radio button rather than write a comment.

There is a poll between this line and the word “comment” above.  If you do not see it AdBlock may be hiding it or you are using Firefox as your browser.

There are also some complications.  If you are in multiple leagues, as I am, you will need to make multiple cineplexes, since each may have to conform to different rule.  Fortunately, that is now supported as well.  If you’re only in the TAGN league I don’t think you will have to change anything, but we shall see.

Diablo III Lore in a Minute

Tomorrow we will be five years down the road from the Diablo III launch, so this seemed appropriate.